


An Unexpected Expedition

by showsforsnails



Category: At the Mountains of Madness - H. P. Lovecraft, Polar Explorer RPF
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Horror, Humor, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, mainly derived from the fact that it's Amundsen vs Lovecraftian monsters, there's nothing funny in Johansen's fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:01:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24613441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails
Summary: Not a Lovecraft fic, but an "Amundsen meets Lovecraftian monsters and tries to eat them (also things are complicated between him and everyone else)" fic.





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Незапланированная экспедиция](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12830589) by [showsforsnails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails). 



When the team returns from the South Pole, they are received at Framheim with surprising news. Johansen, still angry from the way he had been treated, but too excited by his discovery, tells them of the ancient ruins he has discovered with Prestrud and Stubberud. His tale sounds too unbelievable for Amundsen not to attempt a joke about heavy drinking and optical illusions, but Prestrud and Stubberud’s words, as well as the photographs taken by Johansen himself, prove he’s telling the truth.

“We should send there a real expedition,” Johansen says, emphasising the word “real”. “We must explore the city thoroughly, if it’s possible, go to the lower levels of the buildings, because we entered some of them but we didn’t have much time, we had to reach the magnetic pole—”

Amundsen feels embarrassed and this irritates him. Johansen is right, but if Amundsen listens to his advice this (he thinks) will mean, in a way, admitting he was wrong and treated Johansen wrong. It also feels as if Nansen is trying to run his expedition.

“We’re not archaeologists,” he says sharply. “We got Fram to reach the pole. We reached it and there’s nothing more for us to do here.”

He already knows what Johansen will say.

“Doctor Nansen,” Johansen says, “wouldn’t have let such an opportunity pass.”

“Doctor Nansen,” Amundsed replies, immediately regretting his words, “has never been to any of the poles.”

There is an awkward, tense silence in the room.

“This isn’t my field,” Amundsen says in a conciliatory tone. “We were given Fram for a completely different purpose—”

“To reach the North Pole,” Johansen says. “We used her to reach the South Pole. We are not doing what we had promised to do in any case. Why not make another small expedition? It would be much more difficult to return home, get permission to use Fram again, and then return here. More expensive too.”

Amundsen realises he’s lost the argument.


	2. A Full Version

“I wished to speak to you about Johansen,” Nansen says, and Amundsen tenses inwardly, even though he’d known they’d have this talk.

“You know that he wrote to me some time before… before _that_ happened?” Nansen says.

Amundsen shakes his head. He doesn’t know but he can guess.

“He sent me several letters,” Nansen says. “Long-winded, incoherent for the most part, letters that felt so depressing that the sad event that followed them could be even seen as logical. Truth be told, I didn’t expect at the time that he would do this. I just thought he was going through some hard times.”

Amundsen is silent. They are sitting in the study on the top floor of the Polhøgda, illuminated only by the grey light of a short winter day (Nansen considers artificial lighting in daytime a pointless waste of money).

“When I decided to re-read them after his death, I noticed some details that I found interesting,” Nansen continues in a tone that Amundsen thinks of as accusatory. “Judging by the hints in these letters, the last years of Johansen’s life were overshadowed by some horrifying memories of Antarctica. It is possible that these memories were what pushed him to that last irreversible step.”

Amundsen is looking past Nansen, out of the window, at the cheerless winter landscape under skies covered in grey clouds.

“As I recall, before leaving Antarctica, you took a small expedition, and you have not talked much about its results.”

“Yes,” Amundsen says reluctantly. “We went to the ruins he’d found during his expedition to the magnetic pole.”

“I think he meant this expedition,” Nansen says. “What happened there?”  
Amundsen shrugs.

“It’s a bizarre and a rather funny story, although I understand that it might have affected Johansen’s frayed nerves… Even I was a bit frightened at first by what we saw.”

“What did you see?”

Amundsen looks silently on his intertwined fingers, gathering his thoughts.

“You have read the expedition report, of course.”

Nansen nods.

“In it, I described the exploration of the above-ground levels of the ruins, but not the descent underground. If you’ve read the report, you must also remember the photographs and the drawings. The impression they leave is far from cheerful, although that could be because of them being so unusual. The uneasy way we felt could be explained by a thousand of circumstances — being tired, darkness, the unusual architecture and images on the walls. Whatever it was, underground the feeling intensified. This was not because of the dark; it had been dusk on the upper levels and we passed from hall to hall with lanterns; this wasn’t because of the reliefs either — their subjects didn’t differ much from what we had sketched on the upper levels.”

He falls silent for a moment and notices that Nansen is listening to him intently.

“First of all, we met the penguins,” he says and suppresses a laugh that he thinks would be inappropriate. “Big, featherless, blind penguins. As I recall, when a flock of them first approached us coming out of the dark passage, Johansen exclaimed something in agitation, Prestrud did the same, and even I felt uneasy.”

“And how did the penguins act?”

“They were harmless,” Amundsen says. “In everything except their looks they proved to be regular penguins. Later, we ate one of them and discovered that its taste was regular too.”

“You ate one of the penguins,” Nansen repeats after him. “But you didn’t include it in the report.”

“The report,” Amundsen explains, “didn’t concern the underground part of the ruins. I regret the decision to limit it only to the above-ground levels, but my companions asked me to do this, vowing to stay silent about the underground passages. Johansen,” he adds grimly, “made me promise to stay silent, and I gave him my word, but, as I see, he didn’t keep his.”

Nansen says nothing.

“Then,” Amundsen says, “we soon began coming across corpses whose heads had been bitten off. I would have said “disfigured”, but these were carcasses of the creatures from the reliefs. Can you remember them? I wouldn’t say that the dead bodies were uglier than the images.”

“And then?”

“Then… As you remember, we were tired, we were in unfamiliar surroundings, there were rather disquieting sounds in those passages, made, probably, by the wind, the penguins and our own steps. Soon, we began to feel there was something watching us, we even felt that something was waiting for us ahead. We were so certain of this we even discussed this strange feeling, whispering among ourselves. Of course, it could be explained entirely by the strange circumstances we found ourselves in, and it probably had nothing to do with what we finally saw.”

“What was it?” Nansen asks. “What did you see?”

Amundsen pauses to think.

“I don’t know what it was,” he admits. “This makes me regret even more my promise to tell no-one about this… let’s call it a creature. Lately, I even tried contacting everyone who had been in the ruins with me, to get their permission to publish the second part of the report. Johansen, unfortunately, did not give his permission. I’m very sorry he did this because this phenomenon or creature must be studied carefully. However, now that he’s dead I don’t need his permission,” he says, not noticing the hard look Nansen is giving him.

“It was… I don’t know what to compare it to. Maybe a landslide or a wave moving straight at you. There was something huge, formless, and possibly colourless that seemed black in the dark passage. It might have had chaotically placed eyes that appeared and disappeared. I said this creature was formless,” Amundsen adds, “but it would be better to say it was constantly changing its form. An enormous amoeba was moving in our direction.”

Nansen with every word spoken by Amundsen becomes more and more convinced that he is looking at the cause of Johansen’s suicide, realises at the same time that the story fascinates him and, just like Amundsen, he might even regret Johansen’s refusal to publish the full report. He’s never heard anything like this.

“As one, we ran back, towards the exit,” Amundsen continues. “I have never felt such fear. It seemed to me that not only we couldn’t leave the creature behind, but that it was also gaining speed. I even thought that it was moving with a deafening noise, although I was probably only hearing the sound of our footsteps, amplified by the echo, and my own pulse, beating in my ears.”

He is quiet for a moment and then he continues.

“The underground part of the ruins consisted of passages and halls they linked. We ran past several of these halls, from which several passages issued in different directions. We were lucky - at some point the creature didn’t just fall behind, it also took the wrong passage, and we could return above ground. We were alive, of course, and this was cause for celebration, but had we been able to lure it outside, shoot and dissect it—”

He sighs with regret.

“So we had to make do with a penguin, but this was such a poor substitute, that I felt almost no regret when we decided not to include the penguins in the report either. It did taste well, even though we had to prepare it quickly, using what we had brought with us as garnish.”

He catches himself, realising that discussing the taste of a giant penguin is far from appropriate right now.

“I’m sorry for Johansen’s death but it was not my fault,” he says after another pause, looking at Nansen. “The trip was his idea, he discovered the ruins and insisted we explore them. Even before leaving on Fram he had been feeling unwell, and everything that happened during our expedition—”

“All of this,” Nansen says sharply, “was a blow to his mind that had already been fragile.”

“I only took him with me because you wanted it!” Amundsen says angrily. “I didn’t need a middle-aged unstable alcoholic for my South Pole expedition, but you asked me to take him.”

“I thought that taking part in the expedition would do him good,” Nansen says just as angrily. “Maybe if someone else had been leading it—”

“In that case you should have forced someone else to take him, instead of using your influence on me,” Amundsen says. “I felt such an obligation to you, I owed you so much that I couldn’t say no when you asked me for this favour. Maybe you shouldn’t have given me Fram so that you wouldn’t have to feel sorry later that you helped me reach the pole without sacrificing a single human life in the process.”

***

The two explorers grow apart for a while, but the communication resumes soon: Nansen, sometimes trying to make Amundsen feel guilt for Johansen’s death, and sometimes reminding him of everything Nansen has done for him, eventually convinces him to undertake a North Pole expedition that Amundsen finds needless.


End file.
